The Snare

1. A RETURN

1. A RETURN Up at Parham Station, up where Martin Parham lived with his wife and children and all that family of relatives, one of the day's few major events was the arrival of the bus bearing in its underparts—along with suitcases, young unplanted balled trees, parts of farm machinery—the wire-tied package of New Orleans papers. The storekeeper cut the wire with a pair of wire cutters, then left the package on the counter. During the next half hour everyone in that community—mainly Parhams or their relatives—would stop before the door in their Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals and Oldsmobiles and wander inside casually, asking before they picked up the paper for milk or cream or butter or soap or salt or maybe a package of frozen shrimp and some tonic water if company had unexpectedly arrived. If children ran up the steps and inside ahead of whatever adult was with them, they would want popsicles and Dixie cups. There was a good smell about the store, Martin always thought. In fact, he knew his children best when they were running ahead of him into it, up the broad unpainted steps, each worn down like a saddle in the middle. The hangers-on, the old men and loafers of every age, sat around and waited to speak until spoken to in that sly mock democratic way that said all were equal in God's eyes, but that it had a special meaning to own that much land and drive that type of car and that one of the things it meant was you'd better learn to speak first and to speak 219 2 2 0 T H E S N A R E well, with just the right tone and manner. Martin had always had the knack of doing it. You would think he really meant it, every time. On that day he noticed something for the first time: the children had quit running ahead of him. Today, they walked quietly. The girl, Mary Nell, sweet, brown-haired, and shy, was inclined to duck her head passing the men on the porch. As she bit her nails at times, she clenched her fists up. Martin guessed that awkwardnesswas torture. The boy, Davey,more extroverted, used to ripping up the steps two at a time, clambered evenly, head up and grinning generally. They had both been instructed that they must always speak and they did so, each after their own fashion. They went through the screen door ahead of him. Martin stopped and looked round, exchanging a word here, a question there; then he entered the dim interior, removing his dark glasses, then letting his eyes adjust on their own. "Well now," the storeman, Mr. Williford, was saying. "Agnes's been in and your mamma. Toots came early but the paper hadn't come. Said he'd be back. Noland's off fishing, I hear. How's your girl?" It was Martin's wife he meant. She'd been sick off and on for years and kept having to go to specialists. "She's been a little bit better the last two weeks. Let's hope she don't have to go back." "I sure hope it. She's had a hard enough time." He put the milk and bread in a bag, along with the foilwrapped chill package of cream cheese. "Be anything else?" "Just the paper . . . unless y'all want something." He turned to the children. Mary Nell shook her head but Davey had a magazine already—Mad. His wife hated it, but Martin, as always, laughed and paid. So, picking up everything, he put his change in his pockets, set his dark glasses back in place. "Warming up," said Mr. Williford. " 'At's right." Elizabeth Spencer 221 Back to the car. He did not open the newspaper until he reached home and then only when he was in the large modern kitchen on the ground floor of their split-level house with bedrooms above the short flight of horizontally elongated stairs, whose dark wood planking hung in space like a mobile, suggesting an airy passage, hung with vines and decked with plants and sculptures. (The plans for that stairway had existed for years in the architect's original sketches before the children were deemed out of danger of falling down it; then they installed it.) Martin put the milk and...